Brazil’s Supreme Court Blocks Local Bans on Grammatically Wrong ‘Gender Neutral’ Language in Schools

Brazilian Supreme Federal Tribunal (STF) Minister Alexandre de Moraes suspended ordinances in the towns of Ibirité and Águas Lindas on Monday that had banned the use and teaching of “gender neutral” Portuguese across all schools and public administration offices.

The now-suspended rules forbade the use of “gender neutral” language — also colloquially referred to as “non-binary dialect” — in the contents of teaching materials of both public and private schools, as well as forbidding its usage in public office documents, tender notices, or in any kind of public-funded cultural, sporting, or social activity.

De Moraes, one of the most powerful judges in Brazil, suspended the laws through a preliminary injunction pending the analysis of the rest of the Brazilian top court justices on May 31. 

The suspension of the laws reportedly stems from lawsuits filed by two Brazilian LGBTQIAP2S+ non-government organizations, the National LGBTI+ Alliance and the Brazilian Association of “Homotransafetive” Families. The groups claimed the laws were unconstitutional as the power to determine education guidelines lies with the federal government. De Moraes agreed with the claimants’ arguments.

He reportedly wrote in his ruling:

In this context, municipalities do not have the legislative power to issue rules that deal with curricula, syllabuses, teaching methodologies or ways of carrying out teaching activities. Any need to supplement federal legislation, with a view to regulating local interests, would never justify a ban on pedagogical content. 

“The prohibition on the dissemination of content in teaching activity in educational establishments, in the manner affected by the contested municipal law,” the judge continued, “implies explicit interference by the municipal Legislative Power in the pedagogical curriculum taught by educational institutions linked to the National Education System.”

Brazil’s official language is Portuguese, a romance language whose structure includes masculine and feminine gendered words. The gender of a word typically has no relation to the concept of biological sex. Nouns, pronouns, articles, and adjectives are written and spoken with a defined masculine or feminine gender depending on each individual case. 

Much like the Spanish language with the made-up term “Latinx” — widely reviled among Hispanics — leftist groups have sought to forcibly modify the rules of the Portuguese language to make it more “inclusive” by fundamentally altering the vowels that define the gender of a word with “non-binary-friendly” alternatives, resulting in the misspelling of a large number of basic Portuguese words. The goal of “gender inclusive” language modifications, according to its leftist proponents, is to make languages more “inclusive” to individuals who claim to be “non-binary.”

In the case of the Portuguese language, “gender-inclusive” language calls for the replacement of the “o” and “a” vowels at the end of nouns with “gender-neutral” vowels such as “e” or “u.” In some extreme cases, the gender-denoting vowels are replaced with the letter “x” or the “@” symbol — thereby rendering the altered words unpronounceable.

The two lawsuits that resulted in the suspension of the “gender-neutral” language prohibition laws are reportedly part of a broader group of 18 lawsuits filed by the two pro-LGBTQIAP2S+ groups against 15 other Brazilian cities and the state of Amazonas as a whole, all of which have passed similar laws.

Last year, de Moraes overturned a law in the Brazilian state of Rondônia that prohibited the use of “gender neutral” language in the region’s public or private schools and other local educational institutions.

Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.